Madam - "Ten of the Palestinians killed in yesterday's Israeli raids on the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps were armed gunmen. . .shot during clashes with the Israeli troops," writes David Horovitz (The Irish Times, March 9th).
If these "armed gunmen" (what other kind are there?) were shot confronting the gunmen of the Israeli Occupying Forces, then surely they were engaged in lawful resistance, given that the Israeli occupation of their land is illegal under international law.
Therefore this latest Israeli "incursion" was yet another war crime to be laid to the discredit of prime minister Ariel Sharon.
There is a bleak irony in the fact that the Bureij camp was one of the sites of this latest atrocity. In August 1953, this camp witnessed the first recorded massacre perpetrated by Ariel Sharon's notorious death squad, Unit 101.
More than half-a-century later, under Sharon's criminal leadership, the entire Israeli army has become a gigantic death squad while the "international community" washes its hands. - Yours, etc.,
RAYMOND DEANE, Chairman, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dublin 1.